94

laboratory. Daniel J. Kevles, in his study of physicists, labeled the Berkeley style
of academic management group research. Developed in part because of the ratio
of studenis and faculty, and, in part, because of the sophisticated nature of
scientific apparatus like the cyclotron at Berkeley, physics, and to a great extent
some fields of chemistry, gradually grew into big project disciplines with a
complicated array of technicians, students, thectists, and experimentalists.193
By the time of the Manhattan Project, run scientifically in mast part by the
physicists, group research was a well-established part of the academic research
structure at most larger institutions,

While it is tue that Iowa State before World War H had no sophisticated
equipment, and though Spedding and his small group of graduate students
could hardly be characterized as group reseatch in the Berkeley tradition, he,
nevertheless, was familiar with the concepts of large academic research and
adopted that model for his laboratory, following closely the one already in
existence at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago.
Spedding stated in 1943 that he organized his group at.Ames with this team -
approach because of the youth of his scientists, but it is just as likely that he saw
an opportunity to establish a research structure with which he had become
familiar at Berkeley.

In fact, the structural organization of the atomic bomb project from top
to bottom included the management apparatus of a typical large academic
organization, complete with committee meetings, ad-hoc review studies, and
countless group leaders who had wide latitude in choosing research problems

W3xevies, 283-284.



5

kept under lock and key at night, Confidential and secret documents were
more protected and could only be iransmitted to other destinations by courier
or registered mail, two processes that actually created delays in getting the
critical information in areas that had no courier service.

Under OSRD. the above principles continued, and in 1944, the War
Department added Top Secret and Secret Securify to the document classification
scheme in order to protect those secrets of the most profound nature as
America geared up its war machine. These documents could be transmitted
only by officer courier.236

‘The Manhattan District continued the same scheme of document
classification, and in 1943. in an Intelligence Bulletin, the District published
just what constituted each classification. For example, matetials and
documents that related to technical designs; letters and other material that
contained names, formulae, and technical data; documents relating to
personne! and organizational matters of concern to the Manhattan District:
maps, photographs displaying features of the Project; material and supplies
distinctly related to the project; and documents showing meanings of codes all
deserved a Secret rating. Confidential matter included decuments relating to
design where only code names were used; documents of a financial nature that
did not divulge secrets; drawings, and photographs that showed parts of the
project; material less critical than those under the secret category; and

236Stewart, 251-52, The information was also given to all the Manhattan Engineering
District Offices through K, D. Nichols, “District Clrenlar Letter (Mi44-113),” May 6, 1944
included in MED History, Book I General, Volume 14 Intelligence and Security, ix Ar6,
‘The letter detailed the chessfication, transmission and hanin
storage, and destruction requirements of these documents.

ing, processing, ¥ uction,



11

contracts, including security regulations, over to the Army’s Manhatian
Engineer Disirict22”

The Manhattan Project security system for personnel differed in several
respects from the old OSRD system. Under OSRD there were no agencies
outside the military involved in the clearance of personnel. Groves instituted
a program of clearance for all personnel, with the FBI and Office of Naval

" Intelligence assisting in personnel backgrounds clearances.?8 Starting in the
fall of 1942, all personne! were either classified or unclassified workers, The
classified employes, underwent different procedures according to
modifications over time, but all had to undergo an identification process by
filling out a personnel security questionnaire or personal history statement;
each person was finger printed and had to provide proof of citizenship; each
employee had to read and sign a copy of the Espionage Act or a secret
agreement oath; and no one had access to any information unfit clearance was
received. Over 400,000 employees paiticipated in this process from July 1942
until August 1945,229 :

Personnel clearance at Towa State College

Towa State College followed these same procedures in the clearance of its
personnel. Workers on the project remember clearly that they signed oaths of
allegiance and later filled out personnel questionnaires. No man or woman
was allowed to work on the actual project until clearance was received,

2?Stewart, 248-249.
ZBMED History, Book 1 General, Volume 14 Intelligence and Security, $2.
225MED History, Book I General, Volume 14 Intelligence and Security, $3-S4.



88

Other materials supplied by the Ames Project

The Ames scientists experimented with more than uranium, especially
as the demand for its production began to wane in late 1943. In 1944, several
sites working with plutonium, needed crucibles made from a cerous sulfide.
Ames discovered a way to reduce anhydrous cerous chloride with calcium to
get a ninety-nine per cent pure metal. After problems with the casting
procedures were solved, the first pure metal was shipped from Ames in
August 1944. Over 425 pounds of this product was produced at Ames until
August 1945. at which time that operation was also discontinued,190

Ames also received requests from several sites during the war to
produce small quantities of pure rare earth metals discovered in the reduction
processes Ames started a small program during the war, continuing to
Produce pure quantities of these rare metals well after the war. In fact, this

Freparation of Anhydrous Thorium Fluoride for Metal Production," Report CC-2713. Physical
and Inorganic Section Report for April 25, 1945,

190Rulmer, 15-16, See also C. Banks, ot al., “Notes on Miscellaneous Reactions and
Properties of Cerium, Thorium, and Uraniara Compounds," Report CC-2942, Analytical Section
Report, fuly 15, 1945, For more technical studies sea W, H. Keller, Robort P, Ericson, and
Clifford Hach, “The Production of Cerium in the Massive Metallic State,” Paper 4 in The
Chemistry and Metallurgy of Miscellaneous Materials: Payers, edited by Lawrence L, Quill,
National Nuclear E: Series, Division IV, vai. 19C, (Washington, DC: Atomic Energy
Conunission; Elmsford, NY: Microforms, Intemational, 1977, microfilm), 32-36; David
Peterson, Ward Lyon, and W. H, Keller, “The Casting of Cerium and Some Properties of the
Cast Metal,” Paper 5 in The Chentisiry and Metallurgy of Miscellaneous Materials: Papers, edited
by Lawrence L. Quill, National Nuclear Energy Secics, Division IV, vol. 19C, (Washington,
DC: Atomic Energy Commission; Eimsford, NY: Microforms, International, 1977, microfilm),
37-40; J. B. Powell, Clifford Hach, and RW. Noltorf, “Recovery of Iodine from Cerium Slag"
Paper 6 in The Chemistry and Metallurgy of Miscellaneous Materials: Papers, edited by Lawrence
L, Quill, National Nudear Energy Series, Division 1V, vol. 19C, (Washington, DC: Atomic

Energy Commission; Elmsford, NY: Microforms, International, 1977, microfilm), 41-42.



98

assistant, Colonel Leslie R. Groves. Marshall opened a liaison office in
Washington, D.C,, depending there on Colonel Kenneth Nichols, an ofticer
who had previously served under him. At the headquarters in New York, he
received assistance from the North Atlantic Division and also the New York
office of Stone and Webster. a large engineering firm that Marshalt designated q
as the main contractor for the new district.20

In the late summer of 1942. this split administration of the atomic
energy program caused a great deal of confusion. ‘the Army men, for example,
had little experience with atomic energy; they had few good personnel since
most military personnel were in demand for more critical assignments; and
the new organization had little respect or power within the Army, despite the
promises of support from the War Department. Additionally, Marshall was
ineffective as a leader, displaying his lack of leadership in two areas that caused
paiticular concern—the selection of the site for a production plant in
Tennessee and the problem of obtaining a high priority for the raw materials
needed for the atomic bomb-project 24

The selection of the Tennessee site dragged throughout the summer,
and in August, Marshall finally delayed the selection of a site altogether. The
OSRD and the Army came to a standstill with no organization to coordinate
the two groups or salve the site problems. Obtaining priority ratings also
affected the relationships between OSRD and Army negatively. It became an
impossible situation when both the OSRD and the Army fought for high

WSetewlett and Anderson, 74-76,

24Hewlett and Anderson, 75-76.



6

meanings of code names of less critical nature Restricted was reserved for
documents relating to the design of non-technical building associated with the
project; documents of relatively unimportant adminisitative matters;
drawings of sites prior to construction and with no labels divulging whiat is to
be located there; documents that use code names in such a way that no one can
interpret the scope of the project from them; documents referring to shipment
of coded materials; personnel clearance investigation matters where no
adverse information was disclosed,257

This bulletin also spelled out in great detail the rules for marking,
receiving, transmitting, storing, and destroying documents. Markings on all
documents, for example, had to be in red color with letters not less than one-
quarter inch in all capitals, Notations on the classified documents appéared
along with a statentent about the Espionage Act. Dissemination, transmission,
and receipt af secret documents had to be handled with great care by authorized
agents. Inventories of contents were to be clearly displayed and copies kept in
transmitting offices - Numbering of separate parts and notations Of copias of
each document were displayed in prominence. Secret material had to be
locked in a safe or lock files and was never to be left unattended on desks. Top
secret documents had to be filed in a three-combination safe whose
combination was known by ceriain designated people, including at least
confidentially-rated secretaries. Combinations had to be changed at least twice

237Manhattan Bngineer District, “Safeguarding Military Information Regulations,”
Maohattan Engineer Distict intelligence Bulletin ca November 27, 1943, Revised
September 1, 1944, 2-4, Provided in MED History, Book I General, Volume 14 Intelligence and
Security, Appendix B-7. Also see MED History, Book I General, Volume 14 intelligence and.
Security, Appendix C-8 for the March 35, 1944 Army Regulation No. 380-5, called
“Safeguarding Miltary Information.”



79

After the success of the experiment, more uranium was needed fo create
a working pile, The new site for the larger pile would be the Clinton Engineer
Works in a small little community nestled in the hills of Eastern Tennessee.
The Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory thought it would be in charge of this site,

but they had to eventually turn over their expertise to an industrial concern

that would ran the actual pile—DuPont. The small Ames production group.
which was in the process of moving to its new production facility, would
produce over ninety per cent of the uranium that went into that first reactor at
the Clinton Engineer Works 173

The Production Project at the Ames Laboratory 1943-45

During the months of November and December, the Ames metal
manufacturing unit began to set up in its new building, the Physical Chemistry
Annex.17% The supporting chemical and metallurgical research continued, but
because of the ctitical need for the production of metallic uranium, Spedding
quit as heag of the Chemistry Division in early 1943 and devoted his full efforts
to work in Ames, especially since there were really two projects on campus to

oversee.

Uranium production
By January 1943, several changes had occurred in the production area.

Most of the equipment like cutters and mills that had been ordered were in

VSkrank H. Spedding, interview 8 with Elizabeth Calciano, transeript in possession of
Edith Landin, Ames, lowa, mi B. pt

W4Pyank H. Spedding, “Report for the Month Ending December 15, 1942: Ames Metal
Manufacturing Department,” Ames Lgboratory Papers, 1.



109
in charge228 The Manhattan Engineer District did not dismantle the OSRD
scientific organization, although an extra layer of administration paralleled the
scientific structure. Security regulations covered personnel clearance,
document protection, materials shipping security, plant security, and
compartmentalization of information. Although scientific research reporting
remained under the command of the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, these
security procedures changed the nature of the academic administration, if not
the research itself.

Personnel and Security Clearances

Procedures at the federal level

Under the NDRC rules, each member of the Committee as well as any
division or section worker, including clerical staff appointed to work for the
comuniftee, was required to take an oath of allegiance and secrecy not to release
any information about the special work undertaken, To impress upon

" academic laboratoties the importance of sécrécy, official investigatots in charge |

of projects with contracts from the committee were sworn to secrecy, never to
discuss the results of research with any persons but those in the contracting
Tesearch groups or with the NDRC Committee.22*

Personnel clearance background checks of official investigators began to
present the Committee with problems almost immediately, since there was no
internal NDRC staff to conduct the background checks. Originally, 2

225MED History, Book } General, Volume 14 Intelligence and Security, Appendix Ac?
Organization Chart, Intelligence and Security Division, 7

24Stewart, 27-28.



95

to study. Vannevar Bush, who created the National Defense Research
Committee (NDRC)}, which was discussed in a previous chapter, used these
tools to set up the governmental unit that originally oversaw atomic research.
He chose good research directors and allowed them: the flexibility to develop
their own laboratories with little interference from his office, He also used the
review committee approach to continually study the progress of research on
the atomic bomb.1%

NDRC, as an organization, oversaw weapons research that eventually
could be turned over fo the military to develop into war devices. NDRC took
as its organizational model the Council of National Defense, a World War 1
advisory unit under the Executive Branch that was constituted from the
cabinet members of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor.
The Council of National Defense coordinated industries and other resources
for national security, 195 Since the law constituting that body had never been
repealed, Bush hoped that his new agency could work directly under the
Exeentive Branch receiveing its funds, Roosevelt indeed approved that plan.
NDRC, a loosely-based 10-person committee outside the normal channels of
government, included only four predetermined members (the President of the
National Academy of Sciences, the Commissioner of Patents, a representative
of the Navy, and an officer from the Army).196

the 14For ra mire complete Eseugsion of the academic styles of Bush and Comat who van
project at the national level, see Montgomery Cunningham Meigs, “Mana Uncertainty:
Vannevar, James B. Conant and the Development of the Atomic Bord, 1940-1088" Phd. *
diss,, University of Wisconsin, 1982).

WSvannevat Bush, Pieces of the Action {New York: William Morrow, 1970), 36;
Dupree, 305.

196Bush, Pieces of the Action, 36-37; Dupree, 970



101 :

Groves also contacted Nichols on September 17, and commanded him to
procure the supply of waniur ore so desperately needed by the scientists.
Nichols luckily found a Belgian company ready to sell some 1,250 tons of the
ore valued at more than $2 million stored in a Staten Island warehouse. ‘The
fast-acting General had won another victory 210

The governing group, the lop Military Policy Committee, finalized on
September 23, 1942, consisted of Vannevar Bush as Chairman, James Conant as
an alternate chair, Lt. Gen. William D. Styer from the Army, and Rear Admiral
William R. Purnell of the Navy. Another example of the academic controlling
management style, the committee served as a governing board of directors for
Groves. Tt met frequently, but had no staff or support personnel; it kept no
formal records, but followed and discussed every important event in the
atomic bomb development.2?

On September 23, after hurriedty leaving that initial meeting of the
Military Policy Committee, Groves caught a train to Knoxville, Tennessee,

; “hoping to procure Jand for the Tennessee site. The next morning after an
inspection of the site, he telephoned the Coips of Bngineer’s real estate branch
requesting them to start the land acquisition, It was an auspicious beginning
for the new commander, who had been in charge for only seven days.212

However, Groves met his first real bottleneck when he left Washington.
his personal choice of headquarters, for a tour of the research facilities in

20 Wyden, 57-58.
211Bush, Pieces of the Action, 61-62,
ones, 78,



97

when to bring in the Army to build the full-scale constraction plants, and by
June 13, 1942, Bush and Conant recommended that the separation and power
plant constraction be turned over to the Aumy, specifically to an officer
designated by the Army Chief of Engineers. by the end of the summer of
1942.20 The Top Policy Graup sent the recommendation to the President who
signed it on June 17, 1942, On june 18, 1942, the Army chose Colonel James C.
Marshall to organize a new distzict within the Corps of Engineers to oversee
constuction of the atamic bomb’s full-scale separation and power plants. That
district, called the Manhattan District, because of its headquarters in New York
came into existence on August 13,1942. Though it was offictally designated the
DSM Project (Development of Substitute Materials), the Manhattan Project
became its popularly known name.20l

Marshall, as the new district engineer. began to form his staff and open
his offices. His organization was by and large pyramidal, more rigid than the
OSRD structure, and certainly by Bush's definition a military organization 202
Most distict engineers were responsible to a geographically-placed division
engineer, but because of the special nature of the atomic bomb district,
Marshall was directly responsible to the Chief of Engineers, Major General
Eugene Reybold. More often though. Marshall's contacts were with Brigadier
General Thomas M. Robins, who was in charge of construction, and his

jones 38-39; Smyth, 82,

*MYones 43-44; ‘Smyth, 83.

22Bush, Pieces of the Action, 27. Bush defined a military organization as “pyramidal,
with lines of authority explicitly clear and positively enforeed. The object {s te ensure that
every need for a decision promptly finds an individual who can and must decide, but no
commander shall thus become burdened with more than he can handle.”



lw

biographical sketch of an individual seeking clearance had to be sent to the
Army ot Navy. The receiving agency sent back a clearance report, but ag more
and more people were added to the project, the branches of the services became
overloaded. By late 1940, there were calls for special investigators to be
assigned to the work, and in early 1941, the Secret Service and some other
agencies were beginning to be brought into the security clearance process.
Delays in the process sometimes kept people fom attending important
meetings or conducting zesearch for several months.225

Under OSRD, the above rules and regulation continued. Each
contracting unit signed a standard contract which set forward the exact
personnel security provisions: no disclosure of information obtained as a
result of a contract with OSRD unless prior approval given; reporting to OSRD
any acts of espionage; prior permission from OSRD for hiring aliens; reporting
citizenship of all employees on contract to OSRD; and hiring no one on fhe list
of undesirables retained by the agency,226

OSRD investigated the lead researcher but left the clearance of other
employees up to the individual contractor. OSRD did admit that all classified
warkers should be checked, but since it never developed consistent procedures
for implementation, clearance procedures vatied widely from contractor to
contractor. Originally. OSRD used both the Army and Navy for its
investigations, but after June 1942, when the Army came into the project, they
alone were in charge. By the next year, OSRD turned all atomic research

stewart 30-31.

26Stewart, 247.



92

PARI 2. ISSUES OF ADMINISTRATION



8t

dislodged by a short graphite rod, the molten metal poured into the graphite
mold to harden, resulting most often in a 1.5 inch to S-inch diameter rod, 20-30
inches long. An egg or cropping was cut from one end of the rod for further
analysis; the rod was stamped with a number; and it was placed in a small
wooden box,1/79

These boxes, made of three-fourth-inch wood, with the ingot most often
weighed 100 pounds or more depending on the size of the rod. The boxes were
banded, nailed, and small cleats were placed beneath each box so a man’s hands
cauld slip under to pick them up. They were usually shipped to Chicago where
they were transferred on to Hanford or other sites like Clinton,160

By July 1, 1943, Iowa State College was producing 130,000 pounds of
uranium per month, a peak in the program. When indusirial plants began to
take over the pracess in late summer, Ames gradually cut its output of virgin
metal.18! Electromet began its reduction and casting operations in July 1943,
and Mallinckrodt followed suit only a few days later, DuPont was the third
company to take over the conrmercial production of uranium. Westinghouse,
which had been producing metal by its electrolytic process, also scaled down
and closed ite operations in the fall of 1943 when the three other companies
took over the Ames Process,182

5Peterson, interview with author, 1990, 6; Wilhelm, *A History of Uranium Metal
Production in America,” 44, Several reports for carly 1943 also review the casting processes
for working with metal production. See for example: C F Gray to F. H. Spedding, “Report on
Casting Contributions from Febnuary 42 to December 1943,” Ames Laboratory Papers.

180Pcterson, interview with author, 1990, 7.
Wlwitheln. “A History of Uranium Metal Production in America,” 46; Fulmer, 11-12.
182yithelm, “A History of Uranium Metal Production in America." 46.



107

In June 1940, when Bush established the National Defense Research
Committee, he placed the Commitiee on Uranium as one of its
subcommittees. By becoming a part of that federal agency, NDRC became
subject to federal security regulations. The Committee, knowing that its
projects would be involved in areas of interest to the Navy and Army, adopted
regulations that conformed with military ideas about security.

After Bush began to reorganize research on the atomic bomb under the
aegis of his new agency, the OSRD, secrecy became one of the chief tenants of
management policy. In October 1941, the meeting at which Bush briefed the
President and the Vice President on the developments of atomic research,
Bush had asked for reorganization; the Presidené, in tum, insisted upon the
utmost secrecy for continuation of the project. Roosevelt and Bush established
a Top Policy Group headed by Vice President Henry A. Wailace, with Secretary
of War Henry L. Stimson, Army Chief of Staff Gearge C. Marshall, James
Conant and Vannevar Bush who would develop policies for the reorganized
research efforts in secret.220 That meeting actually secured the atomic bomb
project as a practical reality and officially brought the Army into the project.
The policy group also incorporated Bush’s ideas for secrecy and
compartmentalization. Since OSRD left so much of the security arrangements
to the individual sites, it actually instituted a modest security system that

l9}ones, 254; Irvin Stewart, Organizing Scientific Research for War: The Administrative
History of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948): 27-31;
james Conant, My Several Lives (New York: Harper and Row, 1970): 245.

20vieigs, 44; Jones, 31.



194

At Jowa State, as at other installations, the Manhattan District set in
Place a parallel military structure. The scientists still ran the site's selentific
research for the atomic bomb, but the Manhattan District added staff in the
three areas it considered under military control—secutity, finances, and worker
health and safety. Although the laboratory xemained an academic laboratory
by and large, basic differences in the administration of the atomic bomb project
and the administration of a typical academic research project did arise. Those
differences are detailed in the next sections of the dissertation, including the
effect of compaxtmentalization on academic research, how contracting changed
the financial management of research, and, finally, how the attitude toward
the special hazard, radiation, contributed to the standardization of health and

safety regulations.

interview with author, 1990; Wilhelm, interview with euther, 1990; Frank Spedding, “Safet
Inspections,” Spedding Manuscript, 102; Frank Spedding, “My Personal Contacts with General
Groves,” Spedding Manuscript, 1-2) Evidently, the lowa Area at one time encompassed St.
‘Louis as well as lowa and even some of the Manhattan Disfrict personnel themselyes were not
so Sure of its status, Frank Huke, one of the earliest of the Manhattan District employees
located st Towa State wrote in 1943, “I would like a Little clarification of the set wp out here,
We hear variously that Ames is an Area, is not an Area; I'm being transferred to St. Louis and
Septanbar 15,1943, US. Doparnent of Energy, Oak Ridge Operon Gok Bdge, TN

25, 1943, Us tment of Energy, Oak Ridge Operations, idge,
Miscellaneous Papers an Iowa State College, Kercattor known as the Cak Ridge Papers.) The
District Office assured him, “Although formal notification {0 the effect that Iowa has bean
designated as a an area has not yet been received from the District Office, for all intents and
purposes Iowa is considered. his office to be an Area, You are accordingly considered

assigned to the Jowa Area,” G. W, Russell, “Letter to Frank Huske from the Madison Square

Office,” September 22, 1943, in the ak Ridge Papers. Some of the financial duties, at Teast,
were detailed in J. King, “Letter to Frank Hnke from Madison Square Area on Purchase Onters

and Vouchers.” February 29, 1944, in the Oak Ridge Papers.



81

old drip casting method with a ctucible and valve epparatus for pouring the
metal.176

By March 1943, the essential methods that industrial companies could
use were in place in the new production facility at the Annex. The steps in the
process were essentially the same as those earlier with a few modifications for
the magnesium. The uranium tetrafluoride, also called green salt because of
its color, came in barrels from either Mallinckrodt, DuPont, or Harshaw and
needed to be ground into smaller pieces. A metals preparation crew which
worked only in the daytime handled that job. ‘They also took samples for
analysis by scientists to make sure the quality was that required by Project
leaders. They also ground or chopped the magnesium metal as it arrived. The
reftactory or liner that was used to line the retort or bomb to prevent it from
coming into contact with the steel vessel came from various sources. At first, a
very hardened lime called “dead burnt” lime was used, but late in 1943
Electromet produced an electrically-fused dolomitic oxide which became the
standard refractory material. Ft was pre-ground and needed no further
preparation, The.reduction materials then moved to the reduction crew where

176Fatmer, 10-11. Wilhelm, “A History of Uranium Metal Production in America," 43-
44, See also C F Gray, “Early Methods for Casting Uranium at lowa State College,” Report
C1-2958, Ames Laboratory Papers for a discussion of casting methods. Also see “Report of W.
Hi, Keller on Uranium Metal Production” in Report CC-298, Report of the Metallurgical Project
for the Month Ending October 15, 3942, the Ames Laboratory Papers, 2-4 for sornt preliminary
results with y “Experimental Production of Crude Metal,” report C7398, Report of
the Metallurgica Project for the Month Eading December 15, 1942, the Laboratory
Papers, . In

Report CT-686, May 22, 1943, the magnesium method of meta? Production is
described Gnformation from “Abstracts of Reports from the Ames Project, April 1942 to
November 1944,” from the National Archives Great Lakes Regional Center Records on the
Metallurgical Laboratory, Chicago, Illinois),



80

place Also new experiments using magnesium as a reductant rather than
calcium proved successful, lowering the production costs considerably. By
early January, uranium tetrafluoride came to Ames from three sources—
Mallinckrodt, DuPont, and Harshaw. Production in general was stepped up,
rising from an avetage of 3,600 pounds a week during the early part of January
to about 5,600 pounds during the last week of the month. Thete was a
temporary reduction in early February because of the lack of tetrafluoside, but
overall production levels using magnesium had risen from about 100 pounds
a day in December to an average of 550 pounds in the middle of January with a
high of 971 pounds on January 24,17

Reduction of uranium tetrafluoride with magnesium became the choice
of the project by March since by then this more complicated method had been
successfully demonstrated. Magnesium was more atiractive because it was
readily available, purer than calcium, could be used in smaller quantities than
calcium, and was much cheaper to obtain. it did present some more difficult
piobléms thari calciiimn reduction though, which is why it Was not used in
earlier production runs. Magnesium needed a booster to initiate the reaction
with uranium tetrafluoride, unlike calcium which could fuse with uranium
tetrafluoride without additional ingredients. Additional heat or preheating
also had to be employed, which led to investigating new types of bomb liner
materials. Casting presented problems, but most were solved by replacing the

Swayne Keller, “Production of Crude Uranium, Period Ending February 15, 1943,” the
Ames Laboratory Papers, 12.



93

INTRODUCTION: THE ACADEMIC V8, THE MILITARY STYLE OF
MANAGING RESEARCH

Background

Since scientific research and development were major parts of the
laboratory at Ames, the administration reflected that of a typical university
research laboratory in most respects. However, there were some new issues of
administration that greatly affected this essentially acadetnic laboratory, and in
subtle ways changed it from a typical research laboratory located on a'college
campus. This war introduced the scientist to the military and other
government agencies, In turn, the government, and, particularly the military,
found it necessary to deal with the academic scientist in order for the atomic
bomb to be built,

The Academic Management Style
The Ames Project was first and foremost an academic laboratory,
developed partly out of the experiences and expertise of tts founder and
director Frank H Spedding. Spedding studied at Berkeley in the late 1920s
where many of the ideas about organizational structures that were eventually
incorporated into the Manhattan Project already existed. A typical graduate
student at Berkeley worked with a research director and a group of students
examining critical chemical problems as deiermined by that group leader.
Spedding’s experience with the particular type of academic activity at
Berkeley~-seminars, group meetings and work with sophisticated
equipment—probably inspired him to institute that mode in his Ames



83

heat soaking pit, and the charge and bomb heated at about 650°C for 40-60
minutes. After a period of time, the reaction mixture inside spontaneously _
reacted and ignited. The internal temperature would reach 1,600°C to 2,000°C
and since steel melted at 1,500°C, it was critical that the refractory liner did not
allow the heated charge to come into contact with the metal, A rod that was
Placed in one af the holes of the flange with a microphone attached to a
speaker system detected the actual firing or ignition. A rumbling noise
resulted when the reaction ignited and alerted the furnace worker. As soon as
it fired, he pulled out the vessel and placed it in a spray chamber fo cool the
retort or bomb. If a successful reaction occurred, the uranium tetafluoride
reduced to wanium metal and a slag of magnesium fluoride, splitting into two
layers with the slag on top and the metal on the bottom. As the vessel cooled,
both layers hardened. When completely cooled, a worker opened the bomb,
tured it upside down, and hammered until the slag and metal separated. He
Placed the slag and used ner in drums for recovery and the 42-pound (a
typical size} cleaned biscuit was stamped and gent to casting, 178

In the casting process, a vacuum induction furnace heated the biscuit to
produce fuel elements. Casting produced a different shape from the biscuit and
further removed impurities from ihe reduced uranium metal. A flaphite
ctucible machined from an electrode held the metal. ‘The crucible kad a hole
in it that could be closed with a stopper which held the metal until the liquid
needed to be poured into a collector bowl. At the point that the stopper was

178Peterson, interview with the author, 1990, 4-5, Wilhelm, “A History of Uranium
Metal Production in America,” 44; W. H. Keller, “Production of Crude Uranium, Period Ending
February 15, 1943,” Arses Laboratory Papers, 1-9.



99

priority ratings. The rating system covered AA-1 to AA-4 in descending order
for major programs with a special emergency priority rating of AAA assigned
fo projects that had short-term delivery demands in critical situations.
Unfortunately, Roosevelt had not been specific in determining what priority
levels he wanted for the new program; he implied it should be given a
relatively high rating, though balancing its needs against other projects. In
July, the atomic research project received a AA-3 rating from the Army and
Navy Munitions Board, the governing agencies. The rating came as a great
disappointment to OSRD and the Army, but the AA-I and AA-2 ratings were
reserved for very critical projects that needed materials, those like weapons,
airplanes, and tanks, This unproved project with its estimate of producing a
‘weapon as late as 1945 probably fared much better than could be expectad.206
By the end of August, Bush realized he needed to rethink his June
reorganization scheme; he began to doubt that the project could become a
reality under the present circumstances. Ihe Army was also aware of the
ineffectiveness of the new organization and in September, Lieutenant General
Brehon Sumervell, the chief of the Services of Supply (the construction wing
of the Aimy Corps), decided to meet with Colonel Leslie Groves and offer him
command of the entire atomic bom» operation, though evidently without
Bush's knowledge. Bush and Sumervell had discussed the idea of a Military
Policy Committee to put some clear-cut authority into the Army's part of the

205 jones, 57.
206fones, 58; Hewlett and Anderson, 79; K. D. Nichols, “Memo on Preference Rating for
DS.M. Project in MED History Book I, Vol. 9, A-3.



75

how much wranium and graphite was needed to how long it would take to
initiate and sustain the reaction. The event took place under the West Stands
of Stagg Field in a room in the squash court, Arthur Compton had chosen the
University of Chicago site in November without any prior notification of the
university president Robert Hutchins or without prior governmental
approvals from Vannevar Bush or James Conant. He had concluded that the
site under construction outside Chicago in the Argonne Woods could not be
ready in time because of delays caused by construction strikes. After a lengthy
discussion session, the governmental leaders finally acceded to his wishes
because the project was under so many deadlines to push ahead and
everything depended upon the feasibility of a chain reaction.16

Construction on the pile began in November 1942, Constructed in a
thirty by sixty foot room, the large stack or pile of black graphite bricks and
wooden timbers dominated the room.167 Over the top of the stack was a

166"Actually, it was later revealed by Compton himself and Hewlett and Anderson as
well as other authors that Compton was so concerned about the continuance of the bomb anid
Plutonim projects at Chicago that he wanted to impress 2 governmental review team, the
Lewis Committee, that jast happened to be in Chicago in early December investigating the
processes used to obtain a bomb. There was still no decision as to which of the three methods

separation of uranium—electromagnetic, centrifuge, or gaseous diffuston—or the one

method for separation of plutonium from irradiated urantum would win out in the four-way
Tace for a weapon. Since Compton counted on plutonium, this chain reaction. experiment was
crucial, But the experiment did not take place until the team was on its way back across the
county, As important as the event was as a technological accomplishment, the Lewis team
had elready made its recommendations in draft form that gaseous diffusion would have the
best possible chance of success. However, they recommended to continue to support Lawrence’s
work in electromagnetic separation and to support pile production. The was
another anticlimax in the policy-making arena, but it did help confirm the committee’s
recommendations, just like ton’s third review report a little more than one year earlier,
Additionally, on December 1, 1942, Groves issued the command to DuPont to build production
plants using both plutonium and uranium (Campton, Atomic Quest, 139-145; Hewlett and
Anderson, 100-115; Groves, 53-54; Conant, My Several Lives, 289; Wyden, 51-52; Sarytt, 90;
Hewdlett and Anderson, 112-113; Gosling, 15-16).

16?Corbin Allandice and Edward R. Frapnell “The First Pile,” 2961 reprint of ABC
Report TiD-292, March 1955, located in Spedding Papers, 2, This booklet was originally



86
tons of uranium from 1942 to 1945, keeping the pilot plant in operation
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week during the peak months. The ; |
Flectromet and DuPont metal production facilities were terminated at the end
of the war also, leaving only Mallinckrodt producing virgin metal and Metal
Hydrides overseeing the turnings recovery program.18

Thorium production
The largest quantity of metal produced at Ames after wanium

production declined was thorium. ‘Thorium had been considered an alternate
to plutonium in an earlier experiment in 1942, when Glenn Seaborg
successfully bombarded its nucleus. Thorium decayed to U933, a highly
fissfonable isotope of uranium. But it was not pursued in earnest at that time
because the scientists would have to modify the reactors at Hanford to handle
the separation. By 1944 though, the Chicago people believed that starting a pile
with uranium and adding only more thorium as a blanket would keep a chain
reaction sustained. That made thorium a most important metal for the rest of
the war years.186 ~ -

Towa State had started to work on thorium production as early as 1943,
trying to reduce it using the uranium process. However, those early attempts
at reduction were unsuccessful, primarily because of the high melting point of
thorium.187 Finally in 1944, the scientists found that if they used zinc chloride

185 Wilhelm, “A History of Uranium Metal Production in America;” 48,

86 Hewlett and Anderson, 296-287.

187S6e, for example, the weekly reports of Norman Carlson for July 5-12, July 19, faly
24, July 31, Augast 7, and. Angust 14 for results of his work on trying to luce pure thorium
from thorium tetrafluoride and thorium oxide without much success. The high melting point
created a problem: with each af his experiments. See also Spedding. Wilhelm, Daane



85
After the vizgin metal program diminished in 1943, Ames started
uranium recovery from scrap. metal turnings from Ames and other places.
"Ames constructed a brick one-story building in 1944, called the Physical
Chemisty Annex 2, for running this simple recovery process.18 Turnings,
first dumped into barrels, were pulled apart and examined by hand for
uranium. Passing over a magnetic separator to remove tron and other
metallic impurities, the turnings proceeded to a cutter where they were in turn
cut, washed, rinsed, dried, sorted and passed again over a magnetic separator.
They were pressed into briquettes about 1-inch by 4.25 inches in diameter and
sent to the casting som to be melted into regular sized ingots. Ames
recovered and shipped over 600,000 pounds of scrap uranium using this
Process, In December 1945, the method was taken over by Metal Hydrides in
Massachusetts and by a recovery plant that had been recently constructed at the
Hanford Reactor in Washington.?8+
Towa State College discontinued most uranium operations.on-August 5,
1948, coinciding with the end of the war. In the later phases of the war though,
the Jowa State group was already more actively involved in metal recovery
and research investigations with castings and rod development than with the
actual production of virgin metal. Iowa State produced over one thousand

183This building wes constructed by contract from the federal government in 1943 and
completed in 1944. It was a U-shaped bui ding constructed near the power plant and generally
teferred to 2s Chemistry Annex #2, In 1953, the College purchased the building fram the

Atomic Energy Commission. It became known as the Plumbing Shop and housed Iowa State’s
Credit Union until that organization erected 2 new building. The Plumbing Shop was tora
down in 1972, Day, 1980, 384: Minutes of the Board of Education, March 23, 1944, 298,

184Fulmer, 13-14. For treatment of this topic in move detail, see Warner, “Large-Scale
Casting” 183-186,



118

28, 1943, Byron Price the Director of Censorship sent a confidential note to the
nation’s editors and broadcasters asking them to voluntarily refrain from
mentioning anything about new and secret tnilitary weapons in general, but
especially to exclude mention of terms and concepts involving atom smashing,
atomic energy, atomic splitting, radium, radioactive materials, and any
references to elements like uranium, thorium, and others Although Groves
wanted any references to Las Alamos excluded completely, he allowed local
newspapers around Clinton and Hanford to publish limited articles in order to

. avoid drawing attention to their work by trying to suppress all information.
The program, by and large, worked, and, though there were some small
breaches of security, they caused no known detrimental effects. The process
continued even after the war, with most newspapers using District-prepared
press releases after the bombing of Japan rather than reporting their own

information.239

Information protection at Iowa State College ;

All materials were handled in the ways described above by the
government throughout the period (see Appendix D for a typical document
with markings). All classified documenis were also placed under lock and key
at Jowa State College. These included letters, reports from Ames and from
other projects, and research notebooks that every scientist kept. There were
same incidents of slack handling of security, especially early in the project, but
problems were generally worked out quickly. In 1942, for example, one of the

29MED History, Book I General, Volume 14 Intelligence and Security, 6.14-6.16; Jones,
270-278; Crowes, 146-148. ‘



1086

Szilard’s initial efforts brought him no success, but at a meeting of the
National Research Council in 1940, Gregory Breit proposed controls on the
publication of articles on atomic energy in American scientific journals
through a censorship committee Ihe Reference Committee, established later
that year, controlled publications in all fields of military interest. Gregory Breit
chaired a subcommittee on uranium fission publications, which reviewed
journal articles submitted to it from editors of scientific journals. This
censorship process was voluntary and completely in control of the scientists
and journal editors, However, by the me the war was well underway,
virtually no articles received review, since the Manhattan Project oversaw all
uwranjum work and security rules permitted no publications of any kind in

commercial journals.218
The OSRD and NDRC Security Policies; A Sanunary

It was Vannevar Bush, however, who had more influence on the
policies of security for atdini¢ research thait Szilard or the Reference
Committee. Vannevar Bush, in setting up the NDRC and OSRD, added
security and the cancept of compartmentalization to the agency. a policy that
even Szilard later argued against.

alliance of England. France, and America against Germany and Austria, In this war set in
1956 the major cities of the world are destroyed by atomic bomibs, (Parephrase by Szilard in
Weart and Szilard, 16.)

216smyth, 45-46; Spencer R. Weatt, “Scientists with a Secret” Physics Toy
(February 1976): 30. ‘ ad



105

SECURITY REGULATIONS AND REQUIREMENIS

Introduction

Security measures among scientists developed before either Vannevar
Bush’s OSRD or the Manhattan Engineer District, even though these agencies

. contributed important security regulations that helped solidify governmental

control of research during the war. As early as 1939, Leo Szilerd, Enrico Fermi,
and several other émigré scientists debated publishing the results of their
atomic research. Szilard, the most voclferous of the group, urged his fellow
Scientists to withhold publication of any mention of a chain reaction or the
development of atomic weapons, He was particularly upset that Henri Joilet in
France, who was working with radioactive fissionable elements, periodically
Published his research findings, Spurred by his fearof a world war that might
conclude with domination by the Nazi regime, Szilard had been a proponent
of restrictions on publication since he assigned his own chain reaction patent
to a secret British governmental agency in die early 1930s. Szilard also
admitted to influence from authors like H. G, Wells, a popular science fiction
waiter, who had predicted destruction of the world by atomic bomb as early as
1913217 By 1939, Szilard was a vocal proponent for security and non-disclosure
of atomic research results.

217 The book was H. G. Wells, The World Set Free (New York: Dutton, 2913), 40-149,
Szilard supposedly read the book in 1932, before he was involved in nuclear physics. He
claims it was one of the things that influenced his boliefs about security of this type for
atomic energy. Wells tells the tale, according to Szilard, that the war was fought by an



82

the apparatus for reduction was put together with the charge and refractory
materials 77
Reduction of uranium tetrafluoride required a steel pipe, usually 6

inches by 36 inches Jong {sometimes the pipes could measure 10-inches by 3.5
feet in order to produce a 125-pound ingot). Production workers then welded a
bottom to this pipe to create a bomb or reduction retort. The refractory liner
consisted of approximately one-half inches of lime or dolomitic oxide, which
was a granulated substance placed between a form, or mandrel, that was one-
half inch smailer in diameter than the vessel. The vessel and mandrel were
placed on a pneumatic table and jolted to join the refractory to the sides. After
the jolting or shaking process, a worker removed the mandrel and carefully
placed a measured charge of uranium telrafluoride and magnesium in the
bomb. He placed mote refractory liner material on top of the charge, and closed
the top of the container by bolting a flange on the outside. A hoist and transfer
system raised the pipe bomb and placed it in a heat soaking pit for preheating

~ tothe point where ignition would take place. Later, a gas furnace replaced the ~

I David Peterson, “Interview with the author,” July 10, 1990, Transcript ia the
possession of the author, 4, Peterson was an assistant foreman at the Physical Chemistry
Annex from jate December 1942 till the end of the production part of the project. The author
asked him to describe the entire process from beginning to end and so much of the above and.
following material is attributed to him. Several other sources give portions of the process
including Wilhelm, “A History of Uranium Metal Production in America,” Hewlett and
Anderson, 398-234, and 36 sever. al of the interviews various people me “Appendis He F
Spedding. Y a picion jew of the Ames Process see the photographs in For
more technical information on the process, see Warner, zor tothods 152-161; J.C
Warner, “Methods for Production of Uranium Metal,” Chapter 7 in Uraniue Technol:

General Survey, by }. E. Verne and J. C. Wamer, National Nuclear Energy Series, Division VII.
vol, 2A (Washington, DC: Atomic E: mnunission; Elmsford, NY:

nergy Co: Microforms,
International, 1977, tnicrofilm), 164-174; J. C, Warner, “Large-Scale Melting and Casting of
Uranium Metal,” Chapter 8 in Urariwn Technology: Geueral Survey, by J. E. Verne and J. C.
Warmer, National Nuclear Energy Series, Division VII, vol. 2A (Washington, DC: Atomic
Energy Commission; Elmsford, NY: Microforms, International, 1977, microfilm), 175-186 as
well as several research reports produced by the Ames Project principals.



96

Even though Bush later called this organization pyramidal (a military-
type according to his own definition of organizations)? he certainly described
a charactetistically academic management style:

fang organization, with broad delegation downward, and full
facility for programs to move up. ia Each [member] then built under
him a system of sections to deal with e plicit problems, and each
recruited his personnel for the purpose,"

The NDRC had not been as broad-based in its coverage as Bush wanted,
so the Office of Scientific Research and Development took its place in 1941.
The NDRC became one of its branches as did the uranium committee,
Abandoning the committee management structure at the top, OSRD placed
Bush directly responsible to the President, but sub-committees and research
directors still held independent conirol over their own laboratories.

‘The Establishment of the Manhattan Engineer District

In early 1942 under OSRD, the scientific program proceeded sporadically.
By summer, many of the problems in procuring raw materials were solved, but
‘no single uranium separation process seemed fo be the winner in what became
known as the four-horse atomic bomb race. The Top Policy Group, which
consisted of Vice President Wallace, Secretary of War Stimson, Army Chief of
Staff George C. Marshall, fames Conant, and Vannevar Bush, began to consider

97 In Pieces of the Action (27-31), Bush discusses the traits of a military style and one of
them is pyramidal or hierarchical contro},
1583ush, Pieces of the Action, 37.

199¥or a complete description of the four separation (the s diffusion,
electromagnetic, and onteifege Pegs for ‘uranium and the pluiontem separation ft from
irradiated. uranium method), see Smyth, 154-205.



13

come to Ames and each headed a scientific research group. Although the
investigators asked questions about any Hberal leanings or Russian
connections of the individuals to be hired on projects, they were most
concerned with those who had German connections. Occasionally, Spedding
had to go to bat for one ot more of the people he wanted to hire, but generally
they were cleared with few complications 22
Few security breaches occurred in the personnel area, but one incident

certainly proved embarrassing to the Army. Since chemists were desperately
needed on the Ames Project, it was sometimes faster to obtain military men
who had already received clearances and have them transferred to work on the
project, but in civilian clothes. In 1943, Spedding traveled to Washington to
select twenty scientists from the Aimy pool, who were also military men, to
transfer to the Ames Project, The Army told the men to report fo a Chicago
hotel where they would receive their civilian clothes before secretly coming to
Ames to work on a classified, sensitive project — .

- : Unfortunately, the Army personnel in Chicago forgot to purchase
suitcases for the men. so the military men showed up in Ames in civilian
clothes, but carrying large blue bags with U S. ARMY in 4inck white letters

2B2Spedding tells the story in his manuscript history about one young man, who while
intelligent and very necessary to the Project, was 2imost kicked off the project because of his
considered liberal leanings. He and his wife, for example, had belonged to several left-
winged organizations, and he had written letters to newspaper editors about bis own politicat
opinions that were someone left of center. He had never professed that he was a communist,
bur he often made tight of the serious questions of his investigators and tended to take the
process of clearance lightly. He also got into trouble when he purposaly evaded the FBI on a
visit to a Chicago meeting before he was completaly cleared. The FBI did not look with
Aindness at the fact that they spent an entire afterncon trying to find him and later found out
he had been at a classified meeting. Spedding did get to keep the scientist, but warned him.
at the end of the war not to get into work that might require FBI clearance. (Frank H.
Spedding, “Example of Wrong Way to Get Ciearance: 1943,” Spedding Manuscript, 1-2).



14

; stamped on the side. Several Ames residenis saw them and within two hours
of their arzival, a general in charge of soldiers in Iowa was on the phone with
Spedding wanting to know why he had not been informed of soldiers in Ames.
Because Spedding had been instructed by Groves not to even arimtt there was a
Manhattan District project in Ames, he had to tell the general that he knew
nothing about soldiers; furthermore, the general could cail Washington if he
really wanted to know why they were in Ames.283 Evidently, the general never
followed through

Document Protection Regulations

Federal regulations for document protection

Classification of documents within NDRC followed the standard
tnilitary classification scheme: secret, confidential, and restricted. Secret
documents were those where disclosure would endanger national security;
confidential documents contained no information that would damage
national security but could cause embarassment or be prejudicial to the _ : .
interests or prestige of the government if released; restricted documents had no
secrets but were not for the general public to read.2"4 ‘The resolution containing
these classifications went into effect on August 29, 1940.23

Marking and distributing these documents also demanded strict
regulation. Restricted was clearly marked on documents, and these had to be

233Frank H Spedding, “Security Fout Up” Spedding Manuscript, 1-2,

Stewart 29, 250-251. The War Department issued several regulations under No. 380-
5 with the latest issued March 15, 1944, That document was incaded in MED History, Book I
General, Volume 74 Intelligence and Security, Appendix C-8,

25ctewart, 29.



102

Chicago and California on October 5, At the Metallurgical Laboratory, he kad
the first look at the insurmountable task before him when he, in engineering
fashion, asked the physicists for an estimate on the amount of material needed
for abomb, The scientists replied that their estimates were accurate to at least a
factor of ten. Later, Groves recalled his reaction:

While I had known that we were proceeding in the dark, this

conversation brought it home to me with the impact of a pile

driver, There was simply no ready solution to the problem that

‘we faced, except to hope that the factor of error would prove to be
not quite so fantastic.2!3

Jowa State College and the Manhattan District

Although the Manhattan Engineer District was originally formed to
oversee engineering plant construction, by August 1943, the entire project fell
under Groves’ jurisdiction. Iowa State’s production unit had initially come
under District control in late 1942, but by July 1943, its research contract was
under District control also. Iowa State was a part of the Madison Square
District {see two organization charts in Appendix C) under the Feed Materials
Program.24 Essentially, the program was divided inte seven areas as seen in
the chart to supply critical materials like uranium, uranium oxide, utanium
tettafluotide, and thorium products fo the rest of the atomic bomb project, all
urder the dixection of Captain John R. Ruhoff, the chemical engineer who had
earlier helped work owt the ether separation of uranium at Mallinckrodt

3Groves, 40.
214The entire organization is described in MED History, Book 7, Yol. i Feed Materials

and Special Procurement, I have used Jones’ summary (307-318) because that portion of the
story in the microfilm edition was still classified when the microfilm was released.

MED



78

enough to remove all possible doubt that the pile was critical. He
kept it going until it seemed too much to bear, “Zip in,” he called,
and Zinn released his rope. The controi rod he held went in with
a bang and the intensity dropped abruptly to comfortable levels.
Everyone sighed with relief Then there was a small cheer.?70

Spedding reinforced some of the above feelings in his memories of the
moment. Quiet, intensity, tension, relief were all wotds in the vocabulary of
those who were there. Leona Libby Marshall, another observer of the occasion,
and the only woman in attendance, summed up the mood as the famous bottle

of Chianti was passed around afterward:

There was absolute dead silence. Nobody said anything, Then
somewhat later, after the controt rods were all put to bed and the
charts wete pulled out and clipped off and so on, Eugene Wigner
showed up with the famous flask of Chianti. ,. and he poured
into a paper cup and everyone drank it very quietly. There was no
toast... nothing... no remarks... very dramatic, The most
effective kind of drama at that point.!71

This experiment had just demonstrated the harnessing of an awesome
power, though most of the people there were thinking of the immediate days
ahead—haw to take this power and win a war. However, Leo Szilard, one of
the men who had originally pushed the United States into this research effort,
later remembered the doubis he had about the day;

There was 2 crowd there and then Fermi and I stayed there alone.

I shook hands with Fermi and I said I thought this day would go
dowtt as a black day in the history of mankind.”72

70H, L. Anderson, in Allardice and Trapnell, 35-36.
Wyyessel, “CP-1 25th Anniversary,” 18,
TeSzitard and Weatt, 146.



119

scientists reported to Spedding that on at least one-half dozen instances, he had
seen notebooks lying open in full view of the custodial staff. Spedding
immediately addressed a note from his Chicago Office to Wilhelm:

Tam still very much worried about the matter of secrecy. I have

had one complaint about Ames from an indirect source so 1 think

we should take double precautions to see that notebooks are not

left around, that secret letters are not opened] in front of other

people, and that reports are not lying around where people

coming into the office can see them, either in the typewriter or on
the table. Please pass this information on to the stenographers

and the other boys.2@

The conditions improved considerably after the warning, and there were no
other instances or reports in the files indicating problems with documents,
Code names also protected documents from the public at Iowa State and
other sites, The Manhattan District particularly encouraged this practice Lists
would periodically appear from the District Office with new code names added.
Uranium was generally called “tube alloy” throughout the project, for
example, although at first it was designated “copper” until studies of copper
and uranium alloys system bogan to appear. Until the code name for uranitun
changed to tube alloy, the metal copper was sometimes called “Honest to God
Copper.” Tube alloy was an official code name for the British uranium project
throvghout the war. The Metallurgical Laboratory developed several of its
own codes too. They preferred “the metal” for uranium, “sensitivity” for
radioactivity, “green salt“ for uranium tetrafluoride, and “black powder” or
“brown powder” for the types of uranium oxides. Codes were also developed

240C F Gray, “Letter to F. H. Spedding on Security Breach, "August 6, 1942; Frank 1.
Spedding, “Letter to H. Wilhelm on Security.” August 8, 1942; C F Gray, “Latter to F.
Spedding on Security Follow-up,’ August 11, 1942, Spedding Papers.



89
program, though small during the war, became the mainstay of the Ames
Laboratory after the war291

Chemical and Metallurgical Research at Ames Project 1943-45

Chemical and metallurgical research, though completed in the
Chemistry Building, was tied very directly to the production process in the
Physical Chemistry Annexes 1 and 2 When discoveries were made in the
laboratory, they weze, in a sense, tested with the production line.
improvements that were made in production were based upon research
accomplishments, and failures with runs, in turn, gave the research teams
additional problems to study. As noted earlier, there were several research
groups established in Ames to complement the research studies at the
Metalluzgical Laboratory in Chicago.

The Ames scientisis examined hundreds of problems, adding
significantly to the existing knowledge about the chemistry. of matetials used in
the atomic bomb project. These scientists at Ames discovered new melting
points of various compounds and rewrote the existing textbooks on other
Physical properties like viscosities, reduction characteristics, and isotope
separation techniques. Diffusion studies of fission products became a new field
Of science during the war, and studies undertaken at Ames greatly added to the
knowledge of what happened when uranium split into its various forms. The

19tFulmer, 16-17. For the beginnings of rare earth chemistry using the adsorption
mn, see Spedding ct al., “preliinany Report on a Rapid Method fr erating ae
par Report CC-2720, May 9, 1945. ‘pra later more comprehensive re dpeicng et
al,, “Progress Brees Report on on the ‘Adsorption Process for Separating the Rare Earths" Report

2248, February



91
The Ames Project was additionally a pilot plant, developing the bench
work on the assembly line, Though there were some factory and clerical
workers with non-scientific backgrounds, the vast majoity of those involved
at Ames were academics —professors, graduate students in chemistry, and
undergraduate students with backgrounds in the sciences. ‘The assembly line
activity was a complement to the research just as the research problems often

occurred because of failures in the assembly line.



77
Pphotogtaphic interpretation of the day of the experiment in Appendix B).
Frank Spedding was on the balcony with men like Arthur Compton; Crawford
Greenewalt from DuPont, Eugene Wigner from the theoretical section of the
Metallurgical Laboratory, pechaps twenty more men, and one woman.

Spedding remembered the day:
Sitting on 2 stool... watching the galvanometer was Fermi, and
he had a slide rule in his hand. ... it we saw was a beam of

light hitting small mirror and reflecting on’a scale on the
wall.... When they puiled the canirol rod, this beam went up
little ways and then went back as it was dying owt.169

The room was tense and quiet as the preliminary testing and calculating
continued ali morning. Then as his custom, Fermi called for a lunch break at
about 11:30 a.m. After lunch, Fermi began the experiment iiselé. He ealled for
a cadmium sizip to be pulled a certain distance, usually one foot at a time.
Herbert Anderson, of the Metallurgical Laboratory and one of the observers,
later recalled:

The rod-was pulled out a’ specific amount and you could hear the

counters dicking away—clickety-dack, clickety-click. They went

faster and faster and then at a certain point there was silence, The

rate had become too great far the counters to follow.... Attention

turned to the chart recorder. It was silent but could record much

higher levels of intensity. You watched a pen moving across the
ae as the chart advanced. +. s

The intensity kept rising and soon the pen was off-scale. So
the scale was changed. ... Tt was understandable that some of the
6 might become a little nervous. They didn’t hear
anything, they didn’t feel anything, but they knew that a
d ‘ous activity was mounting rapidly. Everyone's eyes were
om Fermi. It was up to him to call a halt, But he was very
confident and very caim. He wanted the intensity to rise high

169Frank H. Spedding, “Interview with George Tresse?:" July 12, 1967, Ames, Iowa,
transcript in Ames Laboratory Papers, 18-19.



12

sometimes taking as long as three to six months. In this limbo position, an
uncleared employee typically sat in the Hbrary reading literature on the
chemistry of certain alloys or elements that might become useful later; or,
sometimes he or she conducted simple measurements, cleaned apparatus, or
ran miscellaneous errands. When clearance was received, the scientist was
‘brought before Spedding and told about the secret war-related project. It did
not take much knowledge of chemistry, according to some of the young
scientists, to understand very early on that uranium was being worked with.
Each man or woman was told as much as needed to conduct experiments or
work on the production line. Though there was not much interaction between
the production plant and the chemistry research areas, personnel had some
knowledge of each installation220

There were only a few instances in the written documentation when
potential employees for the Ames Project were rejected based on the clearance
procedures, Early in the project, the most notable example was Kasmir Fajans
from the University of Michigan, who was supposed to come to either Chicago
or Ames and head a research group along with three of his former graduate
students—Amos Newton, Adolf Voigt, and William Sullivan, Unfortunately,
because he had relatives in Poland under Nazi domination, he was never
cleared to become a part of the project.23!_ His former graduate students did

20Peterson, interview with author, 1990, 1-2) Frank H. Spedding, “Security,”

Spedding Manuscript, 2-2; Frank H. Spedding, “Problems Encountered with Setting and
inane a Seauity System? Spedding Manuscript, 1-2. i
231 Correspondence between Kasmir Fajans and Frank Spedding, May £1, 1942, May 12,
1982, May 14, 1942, May 23, 1942, May 29, 1943, June 24, 1942, and August 10, 1942, Spedding
-apers.



100

project, but Bush had assumed that this commithee would select the person to
be in charge only after it had been organized.2°7

On September 17, 1942, Colonel Leslie Groves thought he was going
overseas to direct a wartime unit, but his supervisor, Sumervell, told him that
he had been assigned to a new position, one that might, in fact, win the war.
Since he had been involved in the early organization with Marshall, Groves
imew a bit about the work. He accepted the new post and even received a new
commission of Brigadier General just before the official announcement was
made.208

Groves met with Bush. and even though an initial first meeting did not
go weil at ail, Groves was later given the blessing of the OSRD head. Groves
proved to be a man of immediate action, On September 19, he called upon
Donald Nelson, head of the War Production Board, about the priority rating
situation. At first Nelson told him he would not raise the rating, but after
Groves threatened to go to the President and abandon the entire project
because the War Production Board would not cooperate, he quickly reversed
himself. Groves left with the following letter in his pocket:

Tam in full accord with the prompt delegation of power by the

Army and Navy Munitions Board, through you, to the District

Engineer, Manhattan District, to assign an AAA rating. or
whatever lesser rating will be sufficient . . .29

Wr tewlett and Anderson, 81,
2W¥Groves, 3-5; Smyth, 83,

Quoted in Groves, 22. The letter was also quoted in a September 26, 1942 memo
from Theron D, Weaver to Groves located in the MED History, Book I General, Volume 9

Priorities Program, Appendix A-6.



%

balloon cloth bag constructed by Goodyear. The bag had one side open
exposing a circular layer of graphite bricks with machined holes to insert
cadmium/wooden strips for absorbing neutrons. Uranium was placed in the
middie holes and uranium oxide in the holes on the outside of the pile. The
Pile contained over 400 tons of graphite (over 40,000 bricks), 6 tons of uranium
and 58 tons of uranium oxide (over 22,000 slugs} and cost approximately $1
million to construct. Each layer was braced with a wooden frame. One hand-
controlled red was used to stop the reaction if needed. A set of motor-driven
rods was controlled from the balcony and one emergency 10d ran through the
iniddle of the pile. a rod attached with a rope and heavy weight for the
unthinkable emergency. The pile was completely uncooled, unshielded, and
constructed primarily by physics undergraduate students from the University
of Chicagot6

Enrico Fermi concluded from the constant tests he had been conducting
throughout the falt that the pile reached its critical size on the afternoon of
Deosthiber 1° On Wednesday morning, December 2, 1942, those invited, on this
cold wintry day, gathered on a balcony to watch the experiment (see the

written in 1946 and reproduced severat times as the definitive history of the Chicago
experiment. Most of the material in the booklet had been prepared far a press release to be

issued from the War Department on the fourth anniversary of the Chicago experit tobe
released Sunday December 1, 1946 (Record No. 95 from fhe MED History, £. Vol. WV,
Chapter 8, Press Releases),

168aNtardice and Trapnell, 9. Hewlett and Anderson, 112-113. H. L. Anderson, “The
First Chain Reaction,” in The Nuclear Chain Reaction—Forfy Years Later, ed. by Robert Sachs, A
Symposium at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Mlinois, 1984 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), 32-33. Rhodes, 430-436. George W. Tressel, CP-1 25th Anniversary Film,
‘Transcript of a film produced by the Argonmie National Laboratory, Augnst 10, 1967, Ames

Laboratory Papers, 13-24,



108

worked well enough until the expansion of the uranium production program
began to tax OSRDs very existence as a secret organization.

The Manhattan Engineer District immediately remedied the somewhat
complacent attitude towards security under OSRD. Colonel James Marshall in
June 1942, installed the Protective Security Section for a personnel security
program, a plant security system, and 2 program for protecting information of
military importance22!_ When the District headquarters moved from New
York to the Clinton Engineer Works in August 1943, the Protective Security
Section combined with the Intelligence Section, and security became
centralized into one unit called the Intelligance and Security Division. At that
point, many of the security measuzes once administered by laboratories and
companies were standardized, and the ‘Manhattan District eventually assigned
security officers to every installation. 222

Specific Security Procedures: An Overview

The Ames Project came into existence in Februaiy 1942, so OSRD ~~
originally directed its security. With the establishment of its production plant
though, that unit received a contract directly from the Manhattan Engineer
Disizict while scientific research continued under OSRD until mid-1943, when
those contracts as well were transferred to Groves’ operation. Under the
Manhattan District, Jowa Siate’s security was the responsibility of the Chicago
Branch Office of the Intelligence and Security Division with Captain J. Murray

221MED History, Book I Gencra, Volume 14 Intelligence and Security, 7-1,
P25on@5, 256-29,



117

a year. Destruction of material was also handled by level of classification,
Secret documents could be only burned and in the presence of a disinterested
person who served as a signatoty to the Certificate of Destruction. Restricted
documents could be shredded or burned by an authorized person, but not a
custodian. Waste (drafts, worksheets. carbon paper, ete.) could be shredded and
burned under the supervision of an employee cleared to handie classified
information. Classified material destroyed in any form required a report to be
sent to the District Intelligence Officer explaining the type of material
destroyed, its value, and the name of the person supervising the destruction.2%3
‘This is probably why very little material was destroyed on the project and why
so many copies of what was written down survive today.

Press restrictions and censorship were also a part of the control of
military information during the Manhattan Project days under the Censorship
Review Program. Shortly after the District came into being, the Army
surveyed several daily newspapers and periodicals for release of information.
Starting with only the major serials, a list of approximately 370 newspapers and
70 magazines began to receive scrutiny, primarily from members of the
Women's Army Corps hired in the District Engineer’s Office. By 1944, Branch
Intelligence Officers reviewed periodicals in their own area offices. Bush had
suggested vohintary compliance for the nation’s newspapers, and at first the
Army and Groves resisted, but with the insistence of men like Nathaniel
Howard formerly of the Cleveland News and then an assistant director in the
Office of Censorship, Groves finally agreed to voluntary censorship. On June

238MED History. “Safeguarding Military Information,” 6-16.



103

(visited by Compton and Spedding in early 1942) Two of the areas, Murray
Hill and Colorado, controlled the procurement of materials while the other
five, including lowa State, processed the ores into fuel elements.- Three steps
in the processing stage included the conversion of black oxides into brown or
orange oxides, the conversion of brown or orange oxides into green salts, and
the conversion of green salts into uranium compounds or metallic uranium.
Mallinckrodt, DuPont, and Linde composed the brown and orange oxide parts
of the network while four chemical firms, Harshaw, Mallinckrodt, Linde, and
DuPont formed the green salt link. Four commercial firms, Mallinckrodt.
DuPont, Electro Metallurgical, Metal Hydrides, and Iowa State Callege
constituted the uranium metal portion of the network, By late 1943, the |
delivery of nearly 3,500 tons of metal had come from the contractors, 900 tons
from lowa State alone, second to the 1,000 tons from Electro Metalturgical 215

Organizationally, the Iowa Area controlled the Manhattan District side
of the Ames Project.. Though little contact existed.between the Ames scientists
and the District employees, there was a group of men and women stationed at
Towa State College to oversee security, financial concerns, and shipments of
uranium in and out of the College. These Manhattan District personnel were
housed in the Collegiate Press Building across the street from the Physical
Chemistry Annex i. Most of the personnel were lawyers, business persons, and
other non-scientists with little experience in academic management.2i6

5jones, 309-316.

A6There is little direct documentation on what this organization actually
accomplished at Iowa State College, Most of the sclentists interviewed remembered that
these people were on campus, but they thought they were responsible for activities like
obtaining hard-to-acquire equipment, controlling the train movement in and out of campus, and
conducting periodic security inspections. {Carlson, interview with author, 1990; Peterson



87
as a booster they could get a zinc thorium alloy When the alloy was heated,
zine was driven off and thorium remained. The success of this reduction
process depended in part upon the vastly-improved high-vacuum process
recently instituted by scientists on the project.!88 ‘The metal was cast into up to
150 pound ingots with beryllia crucibles. By December 1946, Ames had
produced and shipped over 4,500 pounds of thorium metal to various sites.
Before the war, the price had been about $3 per gram. By 1946. Ames had made
a purer metal and reduced the cost to about 5¢ a pound. 189 :

interview, 1967, 22-23. Other reports, polaining the extraction process include research
reports by Ward Lyon (Report No. CI-891, Tec! nological Research—Mectallography Part i of
Report For the Month Ending August 23, 1943} who worked with Carlson and a review of
thorium successes and failures in “Thorium Studies,” Report No. CT-1985, Technolo;
Research—-Metallopraphy Report For the Pericd October 10-Novernber 10, 1944, 3-15.

18Fubmer, 17; Svec, “Tnterview with the author,” 7. Syec was hired and placed in
the Physical Chemistry Annex because of his undergraduate lence with high vacuum and
a8 flow technologies. He improved the vacuum systems so that thorium could Be luced
more easily. For more technical shidies on thorium reduction and production see HL A.

-Withein, A, S.-Newton,-A, Hi-Daane, and-C;- Neher; “Thorione Metallurgy,” Chapter 8°in
Production and Separation of U3; Surpey, edited by Glen T. Seaborg and Leonard Katz,
National Nuclear Energy Series, Division IV, vol. 17A (Washington, DC: Atomic Energy
Conmnission; Elmsford, NY: Microforms, International, 1977, microfilm), 186-218; PF. H.
Spedding, et al, “Production of Thorium Metal by Metallothermic Reduction of Thorium
Fluoride,” Paper 8.4 in Production and Separation of U3: Collected Papers, edited by Glen T.
Seaborg and Leonard Katz, Nuclear Energy Series, Division IV, vol, 178 (Washington, DC:
Atomic Comunission; Elmsford, NY: Microforms, International, 1977, microfilm), 428-
445; W. H , Ward L. Lyon, Harry J. Svec, and Richard Thompson, “Casting of Thorium
Metel and Some Properties of the Cast Metal,” Paper 8.5 in Production and Separation of U233:
Collected Papers, edited by Glen T. Seaborg and Leonard Katz, Nuclear Snergy Series, Division
3V, vol. 178 (Washington, DC: Atomic Energy Commission; Elmsford, NY: Microforms,

i 1977, microfilm), 428-445; A, S. Newton et al., “A Pilot Plant for Purification of
Thorium Nitrate by Countercurrent Extraction,” Papers 8.6 in Production and Separation of W233:
Collected Papers, edited by Glen T. Seaborg and Leonard Katz, Nuclear Energy Series, Division
TV, vol. 278 ington, DC: Atomic Energy Commission; Elmsford, NY: Microforms,
International, 1977, microfilm), 486-507,

redton and stay urn a he Ok ge ake we a
ion and are ind i Ris ratory the r
Oak Ridge, Tennessee. For 2 listing of the complete list of reports on thorium, see Fulmer,
Appendix L One report is located in the Ames Laboratory Papers: A, Newton, et al, “The



90
basic studies of uranium included in depth studies of its hydrides, chlorides
and other salts. Plutonium chemistry, a small research effort at Ames, became
an important part of the project when research on the element as well as he
personnel involved were removed to Los Alamos. Elements lke thorium,
cerium, and beryllium were examined as their reduction methods were
worked out at Ames. Rare earth chemistry was studied in great detail, and the
beginnings of the separation of very pure materials began during the war.22

Summary

The development of the atomic bomb depended upon the kind of
research and development work at the Ames Project. Even though production
became an important activity, the Ames Project functioned primarily as a
research and scientific laboratory. Spedding created the organization as a
supplement to the Chicago research efforts with teams of scientists working on
and solving problems related to the chemical and metallurgical aspects of

‘producing an atomic weapon.

192Gee the various chemical and metallographical reports produced from the Ames

Project 1942-3945. Some of them have already been discussed in a previous footnote. See also,
“Review of Metallography of Uranium and Some of its Binary Alloys,” Report CY-1062,
November 15, 1943 for a review of nranium, including iis meting point. other Physical
Properties, and alloy systems with magnesium, aluminum, copper, etc. See also, for example,

rayne Keller, “Research Studies on Uranium-Magnesium,” CT-609, Technological Research-
Metallurgy, Part If of Report for the Month Ending April 24, 1943, 15-22 for iesearch studies
‘on conditions affecting the union of the two clements, such ag liner materials, the effects of
temperature, and putity of materials. For the entire list of rescarch-related reports, see
Fuhmer, Ay ix I. Also see F. H. Spedding et al., "The Production of Beryiliuxn by the
Metallothermic Reduction of Beryllium Fluoride,” Paper 7 in The Chemistry and Metallurgy of
Miscellaneous Materials: Papers, edited by Lawrence L. Quill, National Nuclear Energy Series,
Division IV, vol. 19C, (Washington, DC: Atomic Energy Commission; Eimsford, NY:
Microforms, International, 1977, microfilm), 43-48.